Well, this is interesting. Research In Motion is hard at work on its PlayBook tablet, as well as on its new mobile operating system, for the device based on QNX. It's no secret that RIM intends to deliver some form of backwards compatibility for its older BlackBarryOS applications. And that's where a golden opportunity arises.

I've read this story a couple of places and it just doesn't seem right. It takes more than just using the Dalvik vm to be able to run all android applications. To be able to run android apps seamlessly in QNX you'd basically need to emulate android within it. Its technically possible I guess but that just seems like a recipe for bloat, bugs and corner cases where things just plain don't work right. I just don't buy it, not at this stage.

I think someone might have misheard someone saying that using dalvik means that Android devs would find to easy to port applications to the new Blackberry OS. And then that got exaggeration over time to become new blackberry to run android apps.

This just seems like a far out rumor that getting traction because its so far out there.

Here is the big news: we have been told RIM is very much considering the Dalvik virtual machine, and we ultimately expect the company to chose Dalvik. If that sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s the same VM that the Android OS uses, and it would allow RIM’s PlayBook and other QNX devices to run just about any application built for the Android platform.

I've read this story a couple of places and it just doesn't seem right. It takes more than just using the Dalvik vm to be able to run all android applications. To be able to run android apps seamlessly in QNX you'd basically need to emulate android within it. Its technically possible I guess but that just seems like a recipe for bloat, bugs and corner cases where things just plain don't work right. I just don't buy it, not at this stage.

I think someone might have misheard someone saying that using dalvik means that Android devs would find to easy to port applications to the new Blackberry OS. And then that got exaggeration over time to become new blackberry to run android apps.

This just seems like a far out rumor that getting traction because its so far out there.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found this story hard to believe.

Seems like some people think that DalvikVM == instant Android app compatibility.

There are reasons it gains traction even in tech crowds: it's monumentally feasible. QNX, although of independent birth, has long conformed to the POSIX standard and even shells out the money to be certified with UNIX branding. The linux kernel under android, while not shelling out for branding, is by and large POSIX compatible. The android libraries would not need an extraordinary amount of tweaking to talk to QNX instead of Linux.

There are reasons it gains traction even in tech crowds: it's monumentally feasible. QNX, although of independent birth, has long conformed to the POSIX standard and even shells out the money to be certified with UNIX branding. The linux kernel under android, while not shelling out for branding, is by and large POSIX compatible. The android libraries would not need an extraordinary amount of tweaking to talk to QNX instead of Linux.

It's not the kernel that matters but the user space tools and I thought Android, though powered by a Linux kernel, by and large used non-standard user space tools.

Are you saying that Android's user space is POSIX complient as well? If so, then I can see your point.

Would it be that complicated? I'm not an Android or BB dev so I really don't know but it seems like with Dalvik and some Android libraries (GUI, IO, etc) ported it, it could work...again, I'm not a dev of those platforms but to me it seems plausible.

What I find most interesting about this story is that Qt has already been ported to QNX. Shouldn't it be easier to run all the new MeeGo/Symbian applications in this new platform?

It might be not only easier, but the timing would be better, with the first MeeGo devices showing up together with the PlayBook. There are less licensing issues too (none if I'm not mistaken). It might not be possible to make the PlayBook use stuff like the Ovi store or the AppUp store, but making the development tools target the PlayBook would probably be easy... Easier than running Android.

But I guess what fuels the rumors is not technical feasibilities, but the presence of Google or Apple in the story.

What new applications? What little they have aren't worth bothering with. There are reasons why Nokia is dropping.

I'll never understand this "There aren't any applications!" Okay, granted you said new applications, but there are tons of applications already for MeeGo, since it IS a Linux distribution, unlike Android which is just the Linux kernel with some crap slapped on top.

well there aren't that many commercial Qt apps optimized for phone or tablet yet. Having access to an already large number of smartphone optimized apps is a good selling point to try and steal back market share. Having access to apps that may exist in the future isn't since I'm sure RIM would rather people develop for the Blackberry as the primary platform if at all possible.

The number of applicaitns available for Ios Android, Qt, BlackBerry SDK etc is not that much relevant. A large company, with large ambitions should not take that in consideration. They must provide the basics, and the apps will come.

I love it how people talk like programmers were dumb stupid being incapable of working with more than one platform. Of course people eventually stuck to their favorites, but good programmers are always learning how to make applications to new platforms. and if it is easy to get the development started, as it is with Qt, that helps a lot.

And regarding the use of Dalvik... Are the existing BlackBerry applications written in Java? If that is the case, I can see they having interest in using Dalvik not because of eventually being able to use Android applications, but just because the Dalvik engine is better than the traditional Java machine. The registers vs. stack architecture thing, etc. It could be just about looking for a better Java machine for the device, and not hoping to run aplications from an alien OS.